E-Community

There is some really good writerly advice out there in the electronic world, and I credit said world for part of my recovery as a writer. I have been looking through blogs of all sorts – there are thousands about the act, the art, and / or the craft of writing – many of which offer sweeping encouragements or banal platitudes; others offer writing exercises and experiments; some describe publishing processes or guides to landing an agent: I have found them all very helpful, each for their own specific reasons.

I suppose this blog is the closest I can come to thanking the world for continuing encouragement.

It is also nice to know that there are many many readers out there in the world: literary and genre, pulp and electronic, those who read for pleasure and those who read more like a form of worship – and, the best news of all, many folks who read in many or all or more ways than I listed.

Writing, as I tell every student in every writing class, is a community activity – even the most sacred, secret journal (in that it offers an outlet for feelings or perhaps a source of joy or solace) is a social act, because it affects the way in which we deal with the world.

Writing is a community activity and I am thankful to the internet for providing a limitless community of writers. (I do not mean “limitless” hyperbolicly – I simply do not believe an I could exhaust the online writing community.)

Another First Step

In an attempt to find my way back into a sustained and consistent effort, I've picked up two long-stale blogs and dedicated myself to posting more regularly on them. In addition, I've started five new ones and dedicated myself to them as well. A lot of what happens on them (this sentence for instance) is junk, throwaway trash. But that's part of the point, I'm certain.

When I was first writing, it was the writing, the act of writing, the different way of thinking that writing inspires -- it was all of that: the reason I wrote. The world was there only for my words. As time went on, all kinds of things happened. Applying to grad school, submitting for publication, submitting to grad workshops, applying to Ph.D., dabbling in theory, building my cv -- writing became about everything else, everything but writing. The rest of the world was the only thing that mattered about the words.

I am a person of extremes, I know this, so the fact that I am trying to maintain six blogs doesn't surprise me much at all -- I know it's what I need to do right now. When I'm not cranking away at the keyboard, I know it's a huge mistake. The blogs are boring. The writing is pukey. I suck. But when I'm writing, this moment, this sentence, everything is right. I need to be doing this right now.

Plus, I believe in 21st-century literacies. I believe in this project and its medium. I was taught to priviledge Steinbeck and Alexie and Melville and Hempel (and the truth is, I still do), but there are some damn fine bloggers out there, too.

In the meantime, I started writing a spy novel last week. I'm reworking old essays and my steel-mill novel, and maybe, when the time is right, I'll send that business out into the world as well.